Who’s afraid of critical race theory in education? a reply to Mike Cole’s ‘The color-line and the class struggle’



simultaneously ‘commends’ critical race scholars while effectively rejecting out of
hand the entirety of CRT in education.

Good faith and bad readings

I am glad that Cole finds some of my insights on race inequality in the English
education system ‘revealing’ and ‘of use and interest to all of us involved in the
antiracist struggle’ (manuscript, p. 4) but disappointed that he misinterprets my points
about the dangers of a myopic focus on the attainments of students in receipt of free
school meals (FSM). Professor Cole interprets this section as added ‘in order to retain
his post-2000 faith in CRT’ (manuscript, p. 11). In fact, the point is made in order to
help us see beyond the discourse of white racial victimization that is constructed in
official statistics, government press releases and the popular media. By focusing
exclusively on the 13% of students living below a crude - and partial - poverty line
(FSM), official analyses effectively erase the continued stark racist inequalities that
pertain in the remaining 87% of the student population. This is a fact and one that
speaks back to the racist fiction that tells White people they are the new race victims
and that, in the words of the BBC ‘
White’ TV season, ‘no one speaks for people like
us’ (see Gillborn 2009; Youdell
et al 2008).

Cole cites a paper by Dave Hill (2008) as concluding that the UK data ‘does not show
an overall pattern of White supremacy’. That is because Hill (like Cole) insists on
reading White Supremacy in simple blanket terms as if CRT viewed all whites as
equally privileged and equally powerful. In the present paper Cole’s section on my
treatment of White Supremacy uses an article I published three years before the book
which forms the basis for the rest of his critique (Gillborn 2005; 2008). Hence he does
not deal with my statement - made explicit in the book precisely to answer earlier
criticisms - that ‘
All White-identified people are implicated in these relations but they
are
not all active in identical ways and they do not all draw similar benefits - but
they
do all benefit, whether they like it or not’ (Gillborn 2008: 34, original emphasis).

Cole also uses my 2005 paper as the basis for an assertion about the relationship
between the concepts of racism and White supremacy in CRT:

... Gillborn believes that ‘white supremacy’ should replace the concept of
‘racism’ because the concept of ‘racism’ tends to put the focus on overtly
racist practices that ‘are by no means the whole story’. The concept of
‘racism’ thus ‘risks obscuring a far more comprehensive and subtle form of
race politics’ (p. 491)—that which he believes is captured by his articulation
of ‘white supremacy’. (manuscript, p. 4)

This assertion (that critical race scholars wish to replace the concept of ‘racism’ with
that of ‘White Supremacy’) is made in relation to my work (as above) and more
generally as if true of all CRT:

Another limit to the CRT argument is that it restricts racism (‘white
supremacy’ in CRT terms) . (manuscript, p. 9)

Critical Race Theorists share with Marxists a desire to rid the world of racism
(although, as we have seen, they prefer the term ‘white supremacy’) .
(manuscript, p. 12)



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